benchrSomeone did this
An agent you talk to on WhatsApp is now one of the most-starred projects on GitHub
Reported by Peter SteinbergerAugust 30, 2026Not tested by benchr
What happened
OpenClaw is a free, open-source autonomous agent whose interface is a messaging app: you talk to it on Signal, Telegram, Discord or WhatsApp and it runs tasks through whichever model you point it at. Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger released it on November 24, 2025 as Warelay, renamed it twice, and shipped version 2.0 on August 30, 2026. benchr read the repository API directly on 2026-09-04: 388,822 stars and 81,662 forks, created 2025-11-24 — the date the encyclopaedia entry gives independently.
How it was done
- InA message in Signal, Telegram, Discord or WhatsApp
- ThenA skills system decides what to run
- ThenThe model you configured does the work; config stays local
- OutThe reply comes back in the same chat
How to try it
The countable half of this record is one request: `curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/openclaw/openclaw | jq .stargazers_count`. Running the agent itself needs your own model credentials, and the security considerations of giving a messaging bot shell access are real — read the project's own guidance before pointing it at anything you care about.
What this does not prove
- A star count measures attention on one day. It is not adoption, quality or use.
- benchr has not run OpenClaw. Nothing here says whether it works well.
- Giving an agent both a messaging front end and local execution is a security decision, not a convenience one; benchr has not audited that surface.
Someone did this · Not tested by benchr
ReproducibleRecorded by benchr on
The star and fork counts are benchr's own reading of the GitHub API on the date shown, not a figure copied from coverage. The release history is from the encyclopaedia entry, which cites TechCrunch, Wired and The Register.
About this source Two sources doing two jobs: the repository API for anything countable, the encyclopaedia entry for the release history benchr cannot measure.
Original source: github.comAlso covered by Wikipedia
Evidence
What each item establishes, and who established it.
- Measured by benchr
What this shows 388,822 stars and 81,662 forks on 2026-09-04, and a creation date of 2025-11-24 that matches the published release date independently.
benchr, from the GitHub REST API · September 4, 2026 · The run BVR-20260904-REPOS-01api.github.com